1. Field of Invention
The present invention is directed to an apparatus and method for processing voice labels in a telecommunications network.
2. Description of Related Art
The use of voice labels (e.g., xe2x80x9cCall Homexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cCall Momxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cCall Officexe2x80x9d, etc.) to initiate telephone calls is described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,325,421 and 5,353,336, both issued to Hou et al., commonly assigned and hereby incorporated by reference. These devices require that a user""s voice pattern for the various voice labels be stored in memory for comparison when the user wishes to use the voice label at a later time. With such a configuration, large amounts of data must be stored and transmitted so that the voice label of a particular user may be recognized and translated into a destination telephone number. Accordingly, there is a need for new technology that translates voice labels into destination telephone numbers more efficiently and requires less storage space and less data to be transmitted.
The present invention provides an apparatus and method for processing voice labels and establishing a communication connection between a calling party and a called party based on the voice labels. When the calling party wishes to establish a communication with the called party, the calling party activates a user device and speaks a voice label into the audio receiver of the user device. The calling party""s voice is then converted into analog voice signals (or data voice signals if a data network is being used) and transmitted to a voice label processor. The voice label processor receives the voice signals and extracts at least one feature pattern from the voice signals that identifies the voice label to which it corresponds. The voice label processor then searches a voice label database for the occurrence of the at least one feature pattern and generates a voice label code by retrieving a predefined voice label code corresponding to the at least one feature pattern from the voice label database and sends a calling party identifier and the retrieved voice label code to a destination identifier determination device.
The destination identifier determination device searches a user profile database for an entry corresponding to the calling party identifier. If such an entry is present, the destination identifier determination device searches the entry for the voice label code and retrieves the corresponding destination device identifier. The destination identifier determination device returns the retrieved destination device identifier to the voice label processor and the voice label processor completes the call to the called party using the retrieved destination device identifier.